SoftBank 1997

First launched 1997-11-01 on the SkyWalker service which was launched in Japan on the DP-211SW mobile phone. May have been the first emoji set in existence. More about this set.

About SoftBank Emojis

SoftBank is a Japanese carrier which had its own emoji set for the years 1997—2016. SoftBank (known as J-Phone at the time) created the first known emoji set. The SoftBank emoji designs heavily influenced Apple's original emoji font which was designed to be compatible with this set when launching in Japan, due to iPhone being a SoftBank-exclusive phone when first released.

SoftBank announced it would switch to using Google emoji designs from 2016, for phones supporting Android 7.0 or above. SoftBank no longer releases updates to this emoji set.

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